Any UPS recommendations?

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

I use a APS 1000 which I picked up off ebay for £25. Common logic is not to buy a second hand UPS in case the battery has gone, but when looking at the APS site I noticed they had upgrades, and the price off a new APS UPS was £75 for that one, so it seemed a good deal, even if it was dead.

It powers a Dell server, the ADSL/router and my primary PC in the office.
Don't see much point putting a printer on it though.

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

I use a APS 1000 which I picked up off ebay for £25. Common logic is not to buy a second hand UPS in case the battery has gone, but when looking at the APS site I noticed they had upgrades, and the price off a new APS UPS was £75 for that one, so it seemed a good deal, even if it was dead.

It powers a Dell server, the ADSL/router and my primary PC in the office.
Don't see much point putting a printer on it though.

I suppose if printing jobs are particularly pricey (colour lasers?) I guess you don't want to croak mid-page. But I'd probably not bother either.

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

Depends what sort of battery life you want. Here, most of our powerfails are somewhere between 1 and 30 seconds. (Lots of overhead wires and auto re-closers on the supply) One small APC (BACK-UPS 650) per server, workstation or router and the phone switch does that job fine. They will provide power from 5 to 15 minutes depending what is on them. They have all been perfectly reliable over 6 years or so.

Don't even think of sharing one between the laser printer and anything else. The external drive and base station are peanuts compared to the Mac's power requirements, and if the Mac is dead, the others are no use, so slap 'em all on the one and let the printer die. The laser will pull 2KW and flatten the UPS in seconds unless you have a monster battery from a truck and a special UPS. The APC above is only good for 650W f'rinstance.

I thought I would be the last on earth to mung my e-mail address. fsnospam$elliott$$

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

Get one with a USB connection, as OS X handles UPS management nicely without extra drivers. The UPS can then shutdown the Mac smoothly if the battery gets low, even waking it from sleep if neccessary. The APC RS range are good for general use, and it's easy to change the batteries when they give up after a few years.

Get one with a USB connection, as OS X handles UPS management nicely without extra drivers. The UPS can then shutdown the Mac smoothly if the battery gets low,

I didn't know that. Where can I find more information on 'how to'?

There's not a lot to it, just plug in the usb lead between the UPS and the Mac. You just get an extra bunch of settings under the Energy Saver section of System Preferences and a battery icon in the menu bar. APC do supply their own management app with each UPS, I've never even looked at it 'cos the OS does everything I need natively anyhow.

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

Laser printer + UPS = wrong. The operational current draw caused by a laser printer is very high, but the startup draw is *incredibly* high. Your UPS won't be able to take it. Besides which, if you've got a CRT monitor you'd be better off not plugging that into the UPS[*] so you won't be able to do any work while the power's off anyway. All the UPS will buy you is a safe shutdown.

[*]Again due to transient draw - especially when degaussing. But at work, the CRT monitors have a working load three times greater than the workstations they're connected to.

All of that out of the way, I use APC UPS exclusively at work having tried those and Galatreck ones. If you plug it in via USB then the OS will detect the UPS and change its power utilisation modes accordingly - you don't even have to run APC's dodgy PowerChute software.

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

Another vote for APC kit. I've used them in a number of different circumstances and currently here at home, and they are top notch.

Forget the laser printer. All the UPSs I've used (from a number of different manufacturers) explicitly state that they should *not* be used with laser printers. I guess they pull far too much power - and who cares if a printer gets shut down inelegantly?

There's not a lot to it, just plug in the usb lead between the UPS and the Mac. You just get an extra bunch of settings under the Energy Saver section of System Preferences and a battery icon in the menu bar.

That's good to know. The oldie I'm using now (on it's second battery) doesn't have USB but I'm getting a couple more real soon so I'll make sure they do.

All the best,
Tom

My ol' grandaddy taught me to always;
post in plain text,
quote only that portion to which you are replying,
post replies at the bottom.

That's all I'm really looking for. Had a powercut yesterday, power was off for maybe ten minutes or so and of course the machine died in a rather rude fashion. Would much prefer to get a controlled shutdown and ensure any filesystems are cleanly unmounted.

APC seems to be the pick of the group, so I'll take a look at some specific models sometime during the week.

I'm in the market for a simple UPS which needs needs to cover certainly two, maybe four devices devices. Main device is the PowerMac, next is an external drive, then the others are a bit optional - a colour laser and the Airport Extreme basestation.

I'm off to hunt round the web in the next week or so, but in the meantime does anyone already use one, and if so are there any recommendations?

I use a APS 1000 which I picked up off ebay for £25. Common logic is not to buy a second hand UPS in case the battery has gone, but when looking at the APS site I noticed they had upgrades, and the price off a new APS UPS was £75 for that one, so it seemed a good deal, even if it was dead.

It powers a Dell server, the ADSL/router and my primary PC in the office.
Don't see much point putting a printer on it though.

I suppose if printing jobs are particularly pricey (colour lasers?) I guess you don't want to croak mid-page. But I'd probably not bother either.

Well a full (100% coverage) A3 colour print is 50p, not really worth worrying about too much, it will cost you more in other cock ups than a failed job will. [1] One of the drum units going tits up last week with a sensor error meaning replacing the drum when it was 3weeks old cost a whole lot more than a failed job did.

For a single computer/monitor combo [2] I supplied the other month a bunch of the APC CS500s which seemed to be a good middle line between price and performance, they are about £60ish new inc the fat. They are more for keeping the power going during Derbyshires fairly regular 30second power cuts, and allowing shut down if it last longer.

[1] Eg me hitting it with about 4 different variations of the same job until i got the page set up right.
[2] which should also power the light requirements of the Airport fine --
Jon B
real email to usenet at jonbradbury dot com

For a single computer/monitor combo [2] I supplied the other month a bunch of the APC CS500s which seemed to be a good middle line between price and performance,
[2] which should also power the light requirements of the Airport fine

Yep, these seem to be good. I've refined my requirements a bit more clearly - what I really need to do is power three devices, with a potential-but-not-important-really fourth. Devices are:

The LCD isn't that important really - I can access remotely with VNC server running on the Powermac. Normally I'm 40+ mniles away from this machine (as I am now, VNC'ing in) so the monitor doesn't bother me too much.

Think the UPS will cope with that lot for, say, 10 minutes? Seems like it would to me. I take it I just plug these devices into the same fourway and then plug the fourway into the UPS, right?

Sorry - I am ignorant in the way of the UPS. The kind of UPSs I'm used to have their own basement floors to contain them and power entire buildings...

For a single computer/monitor combo [2] I supplied the other month a bunch of the APC CS500s which seemed to be a good middle line between price and performance,
[2] which should also power the light requirements of the Airport fine

Yep, these seem to be good. I've refined my requirements a bit more clearly - what I really need to do is power three devices, with a potential-but-not-important-really fourth. Devices are:

The LCD isn't that important really - I can access remotely with VNC server running on the Powermac. Normally I'm 40+ mniles away from this machine (as I am now, VNC'ing in) so the monitor doesn't bother me too much.

Think the UPS will cope with that lot for, say, 10 minutes? Seems like it would to me. I take it I just plug these devices into the same fourway and then plug the fourway into the UPS, right?

That'll be right. Most of the little upsies have a few jug sockets in the back.
For run time, check the amp-hours of the upsie's battery and have a furtle with the arithemetic. Better yet, is a confirmatory test run. I get about 5 minutes on an Alphaserver 800 and 17" CRT on 6 year old APC 650 for example. Argent telephone switch and BT microwave unit get about 15 minutes on each of their's.

Sorry - I am ignorant in the way of the UPS. The kind of UPSs I'm used to have their own basement floors to contain them and power entire buildings...

These little babies are better in practice. I'd go halfway and specify Liebert UPS/bay if I had to go near biggies again. Over the last 15 years we have had more monster UPS or related failures than mains failures at all our customer sites that have biggies. We can't get uptime greater than 5 years because of the mandatory inspections. Last one was new chillers that could not be installed without new mains boards. Makes the software look unreliable. If we had UPS/bay, we would be far better off.

I thought I would be the last on earth to mung my e-mail address. fsnospam$elliott$$

For a single computer/monitor combo [2] I supplied the other month a bunch of the APC CS500s which seemed to be a good middle line between price and performance,
[2] which should also power the light requirements of the Airport fine

Yep, these seem to be good. I've refined my requirements a bit more clearly - what I really need to do is power three devices, with a potential-but-not-important-really fourth. Devices are:

The LCD isn't that important really - I can access remotely with VNC server running on the Powermac. Normally I'm 40+ mniles away from this machine (as I am now, VNC'ing in) so the monitor doesn't bother me too much.

Think the UPS will cope with that lot for, say, 10 minutes? Seems like it would to me. I take it I just plug these devices into the same fourway and then plug the fourway into the UPS, right?

Sorry - I am ignorant in the way of the UPS. The kind of UPSs I'm used to have their own basement floors to contain them and power entire buildings...

I'm afraid I've not seen them in use, the clients are running PC AMD700-Intel 2.4 towers with 17" crts plugged in, as someone else says you can plug in the usb lead in the back so it should handle the safe shutting down of the machine anyway. The 500CS has kettle leads outputs so you'll need to adapt some leads for some of the devices. --
Jon B
real email to usenet at jonbradbury dot com

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